"Key Points
- Alphabet reported Thursday that Waymo, its autonomous vehicle unit, is now delivering more than 250,000 paid robotaxi rides per week in the U.S.
- That figure is up from 200,000 in February, before Waymo opened in Austin and expanded in the San Francisco Bay Area in March.
- Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said Waymo is building partnerships with ride-hailing app Uber, automakers and operations and maintenance businesses that tend to its vehicle fleets."
Took a Waymo for the first time a couple weeks ago, 20 minute drive. Did a pretty good job. There were a couple times where I wasn’t sure what it was doing… minor things like signaling to turn left but then decided to go straight instead last second, getting a little too close to a curb, etc.
However, it never did anything illegal as far as I could tell. The biggest issue is other human drivers. Since they do illegal things all the time, Waymo has to be extra cautious, which causes longer waits at intersections. Saw a human driver blow past a stop sign when it noticed it was Waymo’s turn to go. 🙄
I was just in SF and while I was waiting for my friend to arrive I watched maybe close to a dozen Waymos come up, drop their people off, and leave. I was very impressed, this was dense traffic downtown and every one of them handled it very gracefully.
My best experience was in SF on a day it was raining VERY heavily. Waymo blew me away compared to Tesla"a FSD, which would just tell you to take over in rain.
That is entirely Elon’s fault. He refuses to use anything but cameras. There was a time not too long ago when lidar also had trouble in rain but modern lidar does not.
Why are none of them called JonnyCab?
Yet
Robert Picardo was too busy with Greta Gremlin to authorize his likeness.
They don’t want a big muscle head on steroids trying to take over, blabbering about visiting Mars.
Weird how Uber can steal files from Alphabet less than 8 years ago and now they are working together with related tech.
Because both companies remembered their common ground
Was hoping at this point in time Waymo would be expanding more aggressively.
But no one else seems immediately on the horizon and Waymo is consistently expanding well so they are doing very well indeed.
I’m excited for the last mile problem to be solved and be able to cycle on roads without drivers that actually wish I was dead or playing about on their phone. Also I hate driving.
The level that waymo operates requires an insane level of digital space mapping.
Considering san Francisco is the most 3d scanned city on the planet I’m not surprised the expansion is happening at the rate it is.
Was hoping at this point in time Waymo would be expanding more aggressively.
I suspect the tech doesn’t really work anywhere but in the bright sunny desert climate of the cities where they are active now.
I’ve been to Los Angeles and Austin. Is San Francisco seen as a bright sunny desert climate?
No, it’s seen as cloudy and rainy.
Well, maybe desert is a bit much for SF but among the cities where they are active it seems noticeable that there isn’t anything in a more humid or colder part of the country or really anywhere very green (where road signs might be obscured by growing trees, that kind of thing).
How about Cybercab and its robotaxi service? They are starting in Austin this June. That seems very immediate on the horizon
My view is it’s pure hypeware until proven otherwise.
This isn’t Tesla hate from my side either. The general consensus from enthusiasts since the beginning is Tesla is way off the mark. But the latest self driving upgrades using more LLM tech has apparently been a big step up. By that I mean going from poor assisted self driving to good assisted self driving. Getting it from there to no driver behind the wheel is another matter all together. Maybe they had a single jump or maybe it’s a new path of consistent progress, I have no idea.
I’m not expecting much from Tesla. I would absolutely love to be wrong.
Expecting more from baidu, pony.ai and zoox more than Tesla. Hell even BYD with the Chinese backing it has might beat Tesla.
It’s probably going to happen in June like they said, it’s just a matter of how long before something really bad happens and they have to stop, because something bad is probably going to happen. But it probably is imminent, temporarily.
